Overmolded electronic assemblies have been used in conventional electronic assemblies to provide a high degree of environmental protection to electronic components that are encased within the overmolding. A typical overmolded assembly is fabricated by placing electronic parts on a printed circuit substrate of conventional material such as rigid glass epoxy, flexible polyimide, or ceramic, and soldering the parts to the substrate essentially simultaneously by a conventional process, such as wave soldering. In some techniques, the substrate has interconnection pads that extend along one or more edges away from electronic components that are affixed further from those edges, and the overmolding is applied to cover the electronic components and perhaps both sided of the substrate, but not the interconnection pads.
This technique has provided the needed environmental protection but has lead to fabrication complexities. For example, in order to removably connect the electronic assembly to other electronic devices, a connector header has been added to the interconnect pads as a secondary operation. Furthermore. non-electronic (physical) interfaces for such devices as speakers, microphones, and sensors are difficult to achieve. Accommodating a removable part, such as a battery, has also added fabrication complexity for current overmolded assemblies.
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